The worst piece of brewing gear you have lost?

[Jako]

well i recently took everything apart to deep clean. i managed to keep every super small gasket O ring etc. But last night as i started to put the gear back together i noticed something large missing. My Gas post for my keg!?!?! I have looked high and low this thing is seriously lost. My brewery sink drain is way to big for it to go down. the worst part of it all. i planned to put my gear back together transfer a batch out of the fermenter and brew today. right now i am unable to finish anything.

I would love to hear some stories.

 

[day_trippr]

I never lose stuff, people move stuff
But...seriously, my humble brew space isn't large enough to lose much. Even giving it due thought, the worst I can think of is a 1/4" nylon flare washer that rolled who knows where and basically cost me a truck ride to the lhbs...

Cheers!

 

[Jako]

I never lose stuff, people move stuff
But...seriously, my humble brew space isn't large enough to lose much. Even giving it due thought, the worst I can think of is a 1/4" nylon flare washer that rolled who knows where and basically cost me a truck ride to the lhbs...

Cheers!

that stinks, its about the equivalent of what i am dealing with right now but its small enough to easily lose it.

lately i have been swamped landscaping my front yard so half an acre while trying to brew and work full time makes remembering things tough. i hope it shows up soon. tonight would be perfect!

 

[bracconiere]

i distinctly remember i lost something...but i forgot what it was...lol

 

[Jim R]

I spend half my day looking for things I lost. Just as an aside, I figured out that it is nice to have a couple extra keg posts laying around to use when not attached to the kegs. I remove the center pins and springs and then I can snap on my black and grey ball locks to allow air flow through the keg lines to soak and clean them without removing the hose clamps. I can then hang them up to dry by gravity.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

Before I moved, my brewing stuff was spread out all over the house. Some in the garage, some in various parts of my basement storeroom, some in kitchen cabinets, etc.

Every step of brewing: creating a starter, brewing, kegging, bottling, etc was an adventure in finding the relevant pieces and parts. I hated kegging because there was always a hose/connector/something that I'd be searching all over for to get the process done.

I had a giant storage bin full of hoses, clamps, counter pressure filler stuff, bottling caps and bottler, airlocks, mash paddle, stirring spoon, autosiphon, hydrometer, pH meter, etc. Finding anything there was a process pulling it down from on top of a fridge and digging through a ton of stuff. I hated it.

At our new house, I have an 11 x 11 wing of the garage dedicated to my brewing. Everything is stored there with a nice shelving unit and labeld bins with each bin holding related items: fermentation equipment, mashing stuff, bottling/kegging, etc. I have my grains in numbered vittles vaults and an inventory in Brewer's Friend with the location of each type of grain. Want some floor malted maris otter?....bin 1. Carapils, bin 3.

Every step is a joy now with one exception. I still have to haul everything in the house to clean. Next upgrade (delayed by covid 19) is a sink in my brewery.

 

[Transamguy77]

So just the other day I was cleaning some kegs and QD’s and I lost and o ring! And since I recently moved I can’t find anything! I have all my stuff in 1 spot in my garage but not organized yet. So I just ordered some and should be here by the end of the week.

 

[seatazzz]

My wine thief scampered away somewhere several months ago. Have no clue where the damn thing is. No biggie, a 3.5 foot length of easily sanitized tubing does the trick. Now where are all those damn carboy bungs....aka cat toys.

 

[Deadalus]

Beer gear right, so not any of my 4 tape measures, 3 prs safety glasses, 3 weeding forks, 4? planting shovels, or my 20 carpenter pencils?

Ok then, well there's my Phil's sparge arm. It has 2 little silicon cones at the end that blow out every once in a while. Lost one of those and had to tape the end for a few months.

My MT was originally plumbed in copper. I converted it to stainless but the then the hole on the false bottom was too big where the pickup tube went through. A SS washer worked well there so I bought 2 and promptly lost one. Then I found one in the compost pile, Reunited, then lost one again. A few weeks ago I lost the 2nd one but before I brewed again I found it in the garden, Reunited.

I lost my SS brew spoon, it's like 20"+. I still don't know where the hell it is. I think somebody did move it! I haven't lost either of my mash paddles so I'm still good.

If you noticed by now, I keep multiples of stuff so I can keep working. I thought I was set for life when I bought the box of 20 carpenter pencils but I lost the box and then slowly lost the four I had taken out. I finally found one a few months ago and then Saturday I found one while working on my keezer. It was tucked under the miter saw, so I am back to 2. Reunited it feels so goooood!

 

[day_trippr]

[...]I thought I was set for life when I bought the box of 20 carpenter pencils but I lost the box[...]

That made me laugh!

Cheers! (And thanks, I needed it )

 

[PlexVector]

well i recently took everything apart to deep clean. i managed to keep every super small gasket O ring etc. But last night as i started to put the gear back together i noticed something large missing. My Gas post for my keg!?!?! I have looked high and low this thing is seriously lost. My brewery sink drain is way to big for it to go down. the worst part of it all. i planned to put my gear back together transfer a batch out of the fermenter and brew today. right now i am unable to finish anything.

I would love to hear some stories.

I switched out a drill bit for a screw driver bit and heard the drill bit roll across the garage floor behind me. Thought "no problem, can't go far" turned around later to find it and it had completely disappeared. That was 10 years ago and still has not showed up!

 

[KYBLUE]

Ball lock disconnect poppet down the drain.

 

[Bigdaddyale]

somewhere in one of the legs of one of the 5 plastic shelves out in the garage is one half of my auto-siphon

 

[Jako]

So just the other day I was cleaning some kegs and QD’s and I lost and o ring! And since I recently moved I can’t find anything! I have all my stuff in 1 spot in my garage but not organized yet. So I just ordered some and should be here by the end of the week.

yeah i just recently did that. but once i got into my new house i had to also sort out my new gear that i bought while living with my in laws.

 

[Jako]

My wine thief scampered away somewhere several months ago. Have no clue where the damn thing is. No biggie, a 3.5 foot length of easily sanitized tubing does the trick. Now where are all those damn carboy bungs....aka cat toys.

i am thinking my puppy ran off with my missing piece. he already had it in has mouth once while i was working on it all.

I have attached mug shot please advise if spotted.

 

[Jako]

somewhere in one of the legs of one of the 5 plastic shelves out in the garage is one half of my auto-siphon

this made me laugh super hard. whats the story?

 

[Gozie Boy]

Unbelievably, one of the things I misplace and can't find (frequently) during brew days is my quart-sized Lowes spray bottle with StarSans. It could be by the kettles or the conical or on the floor or on my side bench or the dog ran off with it (I swear she must be doing that), or its right in front of me, or wherever. I just seem to have this huge blind spot for it, and of course I always find it, but it wastes me time. Oh how many times have I sworn that I will always keep it in the same spot, but we know how well that works (like, "please, God, I swear I won't ever drink too much again"!).

 

[Dgallo]

I ferment in fermonsters with spigots. Once a bunch of things came up during Brew day and I didn’t stay in my typical routine and forget to get the fermenter sterilized and assembled before hand. Well at the time to rack into the fv, I couldn’t find the oring and plastic nut for the spigot.... thankfully after an hour of trying to find it, my wife found one of those old school glass jugs with a spigot in storage that actually fit the fermonsters spigot. Crisis averted. Since then I have now stocked up and have multiple replacements of all minor brewing parts such as clamps, orings, airlocks, bungs, and ball-lock fittings

 

[Bigdaddyale]

this made me laugh super hard. whats the story?

I set up a bunch of shelves in the garage and on one of the shelves I keep my beer stuff,I hung my auto-siphon on the shelf but kept bumping into it so I had the bright idea of hanging it inside the leg tube-couple of months went by and a garage makeover I ended up losing half of the AS and can't remember which shelf I hung it in- there might have been beer involved. I just remembered as I typed this I have a snake cam I bought off eBay that might get some use in the near future-only if I can find the snake cam.

 

[brewswithshoes]

this thread seriously made me laugh. THANK YOU !!!

 

[WesBrew]

I have an adapter on the sink faucet for a garden hose attachment. somehow I lost the damn gasket for the diffuser. now water shoots out of the connection in micro streams that you don't notice until your shirt is wet. annoying as hell

 

[beersk]

Faucet adapter for my wort chiller. A couple years ago I had moved to a new (temporary) place and after brewing my first batch there, when I went to chill, I couldn't find the adapter. I ended up having to carry the kettle outside and chill with the garden hose faucet. I like chilling inside primarily because there are no bugs or wind. The beer turned out fine as I recall, it was just annoying to have lost that adapter.

 

[bailey mountain brewer]

i lost a 2" TC clamp, it was in the bottom of a bucket of pbw that i soak everything in and i dump that down an open floor drain, forgot it was in there the second i saw it hit the pipe it was to late. my reaction i imagine was likely along the lines of when your fishing and you've got a nice fish on and the second you go to land it the thing somehow manages to come off the hook and back in the water it goes and you stand there in silence, jaw dropped reaching out with one had. sighhh.

 

[cubalz]

I tear down my kegs as soon as they kick to clean them and I invariably lose at least 1 keg tube gasket every 3rd $%#@ time. Now I keep a stock of about 100 of them in my brew room.

 

[Dr_Jeff]

A couple of tri-clover gaskets that go from sanke keg to tri-clover

One I was cleaning things, knew to keep up with it and set it aside, haven't seen it since.

The other the fermenter was still under a bit of pressure, I thought that I had vented it all, started loosening the clamp, then pow, it shot out, I looked and looked, no clue as to where it went, but after loosing the first one, I bought a half dozen or so to have them on hand.

 

[dochawk]

My Gas post for my keg!?!?!

Piker.

I'm unable to locate entire *kegs* at the moment . . . of course, I'm not sure how many I'm supposed to have, either . . . I had 17, plus a 2.5 and a 10, and was given a couple more, but then a couple of academic moves before returning to my house . . .

 

[day_trippr]

You only have five kegs. The rest I loaned to you - remember?

Cheers!

 

[seatazzz]

On a positive note, the husband bought a new silverware drawer separator thing (yes I know it probably has a proper name but I can't think of it right now, oh look a squirrel), and in replacing the old one found 5 growler caps I'd been looking for. And DIDN'T break my hydrometer that lives in the same drawer. I should ask him to look for the wine thief.....

 

[Mutant]

PicoBrew support on their software has been lost (seems to have been sabotaged); all of PicoBrew may be lost at the rate the receivership went

 

[FswBG]

I thought I lost the thrust washer from my riptide pump down the floor drain. Thankfully it turned up in my bucket of starsan, but I immediately ordered a few backups. That washer is tiny and always comes off when disassembling the pump.

 

[grampamark]

I’ve been reading this thread and trying to come up with anything of significance that I’ve lost in 9+ years of brewing; I can’t come up with anything, other than the occasional o-ring. I don’t count those because I consider them disposable and keep mass quantities on hand.

 

[dochawk]

You only have five kegs. The rest I loaned to you - remember?

that calls for an *animated* little yellow guy rolling back and forth, pounding the floor.

And one of the ones I **can* find is one where I cut off an inch of the draw tube and removed the gas lone, to use as a fermenter. (although I no longer remember why, and later learned that you can just ferment outright in the keg . . .)

 

[JRG]

Riptide pump washer, magnetic stir bar, and roll of Teflon tape have all been replaced only to be found later.

 

[bruce_the_loon]

Cut-to-length and terminated hauling rope for lifting the bag out of the BIAB electric urn. Not where it should be at least five out of the last nine batches and resulting in having to pull out the 25m coil and untangle enough to lift the bag. The customized rope always shows up three days later. I think it's scared of the weight of the bag.